


Five Friendships (Plus One)

by Wonko



Category: Holby City
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2019-01-07 09:16:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12229968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wonko/pseuds/Wonko
Summary: Five friendships Bernie Wolfe has ruined, plus one she didn't.





	Five Friendships (Plus One)

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously inspired by Bernie's (ludicrous) excuse in The Kill List that she went to Kiev because she was scared of ruining their friendship.

Five Friendships Bernie Wolfe Ruined

**_i - Joe_ **

When she’s home from school for the holidays and his father’s working, Berenice and Joe go exploring in the grounds of her house. There are a lot of places to go: the orchard to gather sour apples from the ground that Cook will make into jam; the stream where they make a game of crossing on stepping stones without ever getting wet; the ancient tree with a natural treehouse hidden in its branches halfway up, where they can climb and hide and watch the housemaids out looking for them.

On one of these occasions, when she’s stayed hidden longer than she should, she’s summoned in the gathering twilight to her father’s study.

She stands before his desk trying desperately not to show she’s trembling. She’s never been called in here for a good reason, only when she’s misbehaved and needs to be punished. She shifts from foot to foot as she remembers the last time, a year ago, when she’d come into the house with muddy shoes and mother had marched her into this very study and watched while father readied the cane. She glances to the glass case where he keeps it, then back to his impassive face.

“You’ve been with that boy again,” he says. His voice is like the frozen surface of a lake. She swallows hard.

“He’s my friend,” she whispers.

Her father’s face becomes somehow even more serious. “He’s not a suitable friend,” he says.

Berenice swallows again. “Why?”

“He is not of our class,” her father says, as if that explains everything.

“Why should that matter?” she replies, glancing again at the cane, wondering if this is what will push her father over the edge into anger.

“It is  _all_ that matters, Berenice.”

“I don’t understand-” she begins to say, but he is suddenly standing, his face dark and furious and she knows she needs to shut her mouth.

“Your father is a Lord and his father is a gardener and you will stop consorting with this boy immediately! Do you understand me Berenice Griselda Wolfe?”

It is as if the world shifts minutely out of focus and, when it snaps back, the world of her childhood is gone and a darker, uglier world has taken its place.

“Yes, father,” she says softly.

The next day she is in the orchard mindlessly collecting crab apples when Joe finds her. “Ay-up,” he says, grinning, but she doesn’t smile back.

“We can’t be friends anymore,” she says, and feels her stomach twist in knots as his happy face collapses.

“Why?”

She doesn’t answer, just turns and begin to walk away. “Why?” he calls after her. She lengthens her stride. “Why?” he says again. “Bernie!”

She stops dead, then turns her head so he can see her profile. “Because my father is a Lord and your father is a gardener,” she says, then breaks out in a run, ignoring his calls, feeling nothing but a hot, heady rush of shame.

 

**_ii - Cecilia_ **

_Berenice_ is abandoned approximately two days after her father drops unexpectedly dead of a heart attack, passing his title on to her brother, his estate split equally between all three of his children, held in trust until they reach the age of majority. Now she’s just Bernie to everyone but her teachers. She hates Berenice, thinks of it as nothing but a millstone round her neck, indicating class, privilege, wealth - all the things that keep her separate from other people. She doesn’t want to be like her father. She doesn’t want to live aloof and self-consciously superior and have only four people turn up to her funeral. She wants to belong, to be part of something bigger than herself. She wants to help people; all people, ordinary people.

Her form teacher suggests medicine. She has the brains for it, and the work ethic, and the drive.

Her maths teacher, Miss Lynch, suggests the Army.

“The _Army_?” Cecilia snorts upon hearing this news. “Bloody hell Bernie, that’s a bit ridiculous.”

They’re sitting at the edge of the playing fields watching the third formers playing lacrosse. Bernie has loosened her tie and discarded the straw hat they’re forced to wear in summer. She has a blade of dry grass between her teeth as she idly watches the younger girls play.

“What’s ridiculous about it?” she says, glancing at her best friend. Cecilia is sitting primly, her uniform perfectly in place and her shiny new Head Girl badge proudly displayed on her chest.

“You’re a girl,” she says simply, as if that was all that needed to be said. Bernie’s mind drifts back to the last time she heard that tone; her father’s proclamation that Joe was of an inferior class and not a suitable friend for a member of the aristocracy. This time she chooses to argue back.

“Women join the army all the time,” she says. “We can do anything men can. That’s what Miss Lynch says.”

Cecilia rolls her eyes. “Oh, Miss Lynch this, Miss Lynch that, are you ever going to stop banging on about her?”

Bernie blushes. “I don’t.”

“You bloody do,” Cecilia insists. “Just because you’ve got a bit of a pash doesn’t mean you should treat everything she says as gospel you know.”

The colour in Bernie’s cheeks deepens. “I don’t,” she says, but the denial is a fraction of a second too late. Cecilia turns to stare at her.

“Oh,” she says, and it’s like that single syllable has punched Bernie in the gut.

“It’s not,” Bernie scrambles, “I mean I don’t...I’m not…”

But Cecilia is standing up, brushing grass from her skirt, staring down at Bernie with cold, closed-off eyes. “Better keep that quiet,” she says stiffly. “They don’t approve of that sort of thing in the Army.”

They never speak of it. But then, they never really speak of anything ever again.

 

**_iii - Marcus_ **

“Come on Marcus, you’re not going to let a girl drink you under the table, are you?”

They’re in the student union and it’s happy hour. Marcus and his mates have been doing their best to pickle their livers in single-malt, celebrating having sat the last of their final exams that afternoon. Bernie has a year still to go before she gets to graduate with her shiny medical degree.

“She’s not a girl,” Marcus slurs, glowering at his friend. “She’s a _lady_.”

Bernie releases a honking laugh. She’s more than a little drunk herself, but not quite as far gone as him. “Woman will do, thank-you Marcus. It’s my mother who’s the Lady.”

James, Marcus’s best mate, leers at her. “I love a posh bird,” he says.

Marcus punches him in the arm, but he’s too drunk to put any weight behind it. “Shut it,” he says.

Bernie downs her drink. “Another round?” The lads all acquiesce with a rousing cheer as she gets up and stumbles towards the bar. She feels a little floaty, a little like she’s walking through treacle. “Scotch,” she calls to the barman. “The good stuff. Five of them: doubles.” She brandishes a twenty pound note between her fingers.

Suddenly she feels a pair of arms wrap round her waist, the scent of a familiar aftershave tickling her nostrils, even over the smoke filling the bar. “Bernie,” Marcus breathes in her ear. “You’re fucking gorgeous, do you know that?”

She laughs, patting his hands where they’re resting on her stomach. “You’re drunk,” she says lightly.

“Yes,” he agrees. “But you’re still gorgeous.” He turns his head to the side and presses his lips to her neck. She flinches away.

“What are you doing?”

He leans in again, slobbering a little as he tries to get access to her skin. “I really fancy you, Bernie,” he says, as if the arms round her waist, the lips on her neck and the semi-hard erection pressing into her backside weren’t enough of a clue.

She searches for something to put him off. “We’re mates, Marcus,” she tries.

“No better _mate_ than a mate,” he replies, pressing into her a little more firmly.

“You tried that line on James?”

He laughs. “I’m not his type,” he says. “Come on, Bernie, go out with me. I really like you.”

Bernie’s mind is racing. She likes Marcus. They have a laugh together, enjoy a lot of the same things. She thinks they understand each other. She doesn’t fancy him, but maybe that doesn’t matter.

“Marcus,” she says, softly enough that only he can hear. “I...I like…” _I like girls_ , she wants to say. The words are there, stuck in her throat, expanding until she feels like she’ll choke on them. But she can’t say it. It’s 1991. She wants to join the RAMC. She’s too afraid.

So she swallows hard, consciously choosing to bury those feelings deep inside her, and she doesn’t face them again for twenty-four years, until she meets a woman - younger, more vibrant, infinitely braver than she - in the middle of a desert warzone.

“I like you too,” she says, and hates herself.

 

**_iv - Alex_ **

She meets Alex in Afghanistan on her final tour of duty. She fetches up in her unit as a replacement for an anaesthetist who got pregnant on her last leave and left for a role behind the lines. “Captain Alexandra Dawson, reporting for duty Major,” she says when she arrives, saluting. “But please call me Alex.”

So she’s Alex from then on, but Bernie is Major Wolfe for the next three months, until one day they operate on a young Private on his first tour who’s been shot in a skirmish with local insurgents and he’s the first patient they lose together.

Bernie finds Alex afterwards, hiding in supply tent in the half dark, her face streaked with tears. She sits down gingerly beside her and lets her cry silently, then lets her lean her head on her shoulder, then lets her wrap her arms around her and sob. “It’s all right,” she whispers into the younger woman’s ear and feels her shiver.

“Bernie,” Alex whispers, and Bernie recognises distantly that it’s the first time Alex has used her name. She knows she should reprimand her, remind her of their respective ranks and positions. But she doesn’t.

“Alex,” she says instead, and Alex must recognise the longing in her voice because she kisses her. And Bernie kisses her back, like she’s been waiting her entire life to do it.

In a way, she has been.

What she’s doing with Alex is against all of the rules. Not because they’re both women; the Army no longer conducts witch hunts for lesbians in the ranks, no longer dispenses dishonourable discharges to gay people if they come out. No, this is against a more simple rule: Bernie is a Major and Alex is a Captain, and Alex is under Bernie’s command. So they keep it secret, meeting clandestinely whenever they can, kisses stolen between patients in surgery when the nurses have left the room, desperate clinches in the supply tent and one glorious, glorious night in Alex’s bunk when her bunkmate’s got a 24-hour pass.

And of course it’s against other, more personal rules as well. Rules like _Don’t ever admit it_ and _Remember your position_ and _Don’t cheat on your husband._ But for once in her life she finds she cares more about what she actually wants than all the rules holding her back and, for a while, she’s happy.

And then the IED blows her back to reality.

Back in Holby, after she’s decided to try to fix things with Marcus, to reconnect with her children, to take an unfulfilling locum position on Keller ward in Holby City Hospital, Alex comes and finds her.

But Bernie is still too scared, twenty-five years after that night in the pub with Marcus, to actually speak her truth aloud.

So Alex leaves her behind. The night she goes, Bernie tells Marcus she doesn’t love him, moves out of the house, gets a room in a hotel. She drinks herself to unconsciousness on cheap Scotch and catches herself wishing the IED had just killed her. Because what was the point of living anyway, without family, without love, without even a simple friend?

 

**_v - Serena_ **

When Serena Campbell, vascular surgeon extraordinaire and Queen of the Acute Admissions Unit at Holby City, becomes her friend, Bernie can’t believe her luck. After the debacle with the patient who outed her in front of the entire ward, she’d thought she’d burned her bridges.

But Serena had proved to be more forgiving than she’d expected and - with only a couple more false starts - she finds herself inextricably tied up with Serena; on the ward and in her personal life.

Serena is her best friend, perhaps her only real friend in this new life she’s fallen into. They spend most of their days in surgery together, working in tandem, completely in sync, each one knowing what the other needs without having to use words. Evenings are spent at Albie’s or at Bernie’s flat with takeaway and wine or at Serena’s house with Jason and Countdown.

She starts to think of Serena as her closest confidant, her rock, closer than any friend she’s ever had: more like family. She finds herself confessing this one night when they’re halfway down their second bottle of shiraz at Albie’s. Serena just smiles at her, her eyes soft and dark. “That’s how I feel too,” she says gently, and Bernie feels her heart flood with gratitude that she’s not alone in this strange kinship, this magnetic pull she feels towards a woman she’s known for just a few scant months. Serena reaches out and covers Bernie’s hand with her own. “I feel like I’ve known you forever,” she murmurs, and it’s then that Bernie realises what’s happening and her blood runs cold.

Because of course - _of course_ \- she wouldn’t be able to just have a nice, normal, close friendship with a woman without bloody well falling in love with her.

She buries it, for a while. Tries to convince herself she’s mistaken, that she’s conflating friendship and desire. That Serena is a beautiful woman and it’s only natural to find her attractive, but it doesn’t mean anything more than that.

And then Fletch gets stabbed and it’s her fault and Serena is so kind, and beautiful and wonderful and she kisses her.

And Serena, against all expectations, kisses her back. She kisses her back and holds her tightly and moans and gasps and sweeps her fingers through her hair and whispers “Bernie,” into her mouth like she’s been longing for this, yearning for it as much as Bernie has in the secret depths of her heart.

But it’s all wrong, Bernie can see that in the cold light of day, so they take a step back, go back to being friends. But not just like before, because there’s a tension between them now, tightening like a rubber band waiting to snap.

And snap it does, in their office one autumn morning, with an offer of a dream secondment lying on the desk between them like an unexploded bomb. “It’s just-” Serena says, her face pained, before she falls forward into Bernie’s arms.

For a few hours, Bernie lets herself hope that this isn’t a mistake of monumental proportions; that she’ll be able to do this without screwing it up, for the first time in her life.

But she can’t. It’s obvious, in the end. She’ll ruin this, like she ruins everything, and she’ll lose Serena for good. And she can’t face that; anything but that.

So she runs away. It’s what she does best.

 

And One She Didn’t

**_i - Serena (Again)_ **

In the end, it isn’t the hospital that makes her come back, or Serena’s emails, or Hanssen’s phone messages reminding her of her responsibilities to the trauma unit on AAU. It’s a text that screams in all capitals I MISS YOU and bypasses every defense she’s placed around her heart.

And this time, finally, miraculously, she manages to get it right and Serena forgives her _again_ , and she lets herself believe that - for once - she might not have destroyed everything.

“I love you,” she whispers between kisses. “I love you, Serena, I love you, I love you.”

And Serena just smiles and kisses her back and says, “I love you too,” like it’s obvious, the most straightforward thing in the world.

Perhaps, for Serena, it is. Bernie envies her a little, to have come to this realisation later in life, in an era when people have largely stopped caring. She’s glad Serena has missed the decades of pain and denial and self-hatred that she’s endured, can barely bring herself to believe that it can really be this easy.

They’re in Serena’s bed, fully clothed still, just kissing and holding each other, running their hands over faces, shoulders, backs, through hair, as if trying to convince themselves that the other is really there.

And then Serena is tugging insistently at Bernie’s shirt and the clothes begin to disappear.

“I’d convinced myself I could just be your friend,” Bernie mutters against Serena’s overheated skin. “I thought I could just love you like that, keep it pure.”

Serena strokes her hand through Bernie’s hair. “So you think loving me this way _isn’t_ pure?” she asks. Bernie shrugs but doesn’t reply. Serena sighs. “You know that’s a really unhealthy way to think about sex, don’t you?”

Bernie’s head snaps up. “What?”

Serena frames her face in her hands and kisses her before surprising her with a burst of strength and flipping Bernie over onto her back. “There’s no such thing as pure and impure love,” she says, nuzzling behind her ear. “There’s just love and it doesn’t matter what kind.”

Bernie opens her mouth but she can’t speak because Serena is trailing kisses down her chest and stomach and settling between her thighs with every appearance of wanting to prove to Bernie exactly how pure her love is.

She wakes early the next morning with Serena’s head on her chest and her arms wrapped round her waist. She’s never been a cuddler before: with Marcus she didn’t have the inclination and with Alex she didn’t have the opportunity. But she doesn’t think she’ll ever get tired of holding Serena, of feeling her warmth seeping into her bones and her heart beating against her skin.

They go back to work and it’s mostly the same as it ever was. Serena wants to keep it between them for a while, but that plan is ruined the instant they step onto the ward and remember that Fletch had been the one to help Jason with his matchmaking and that therefore the whole hospital probably knows.

So they slip back into their old routine. They spend most of their days in surgery together, working in tandem, completely in sync, each one knowing what the other needs without having to use words. Evenings are spent at Albie’s or at Bernie’s flat with takeaway and wine or at Serena’s house with Jason and Countdown. And nights are spent making love, or sometimes just sleeping in each other’s arms, warm and content.

“You’re my best friend,” Bernie whispers one night, just as she feels Serena beginning to drop off to sleep.

“And you’re mine,” Serena replies dreamily. “Isn’t that how love’s supposed to work?”

Bernie isn’t sure. Mixing friendship and romance has never worked for her before, but perhaps Serena’s right. Perhaps it really is that easy, if you allow it to be.

“I think so,” Bernie murmurs. “At least...if you’re very, very lucky.”

And they are.


End file.
